Bank Street of Educate

Books

2000

A Brief History: Bank Street College of Education

Patricia Fisher

Anne Perryman

Follow this and additional works at: https://educate.bankstreet.edu/books

Part of the Pre-Elementary, Early Childhood, Commons, and the Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons

Recommended Citation Fisher, P., & Perryman, A. (2000). A Brief History: Bank Street College of Education. Bank Street College of Education. Retrieved from https://educate.bankstreet.edu/books/1

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Bank Street College of Education 23an.k cS!reel Goffeye ofCducahon

Mission Statement

The mission of Bank Street College is to improve the education of children and their teachers by applying to the educational process all available knowledge about learning and growth, and by connecting teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world. In so doing, we seek to strengthen not only individuals, but the commu­ nity as well, including family, , and the larger society in which adults and children, in all their diversity, interact and learn. We see in edu­ ("?Jank Street was settled in the early 1800s, when cation the opportunity to build a better society. J~ was in fact a small village north of the bustling Lower commercial district. The 1 street today looks much like it did a century ago. It is tree-lined and quaint. Many of its federal-style townhouses are landmarks. But Bank Street is far more than a pictur­ esque few blocks in Greenwich Village. For nearly forty years, an was located at 69 Bank Street, and it gave "Bank Street" another meaning. Indeed, early childhood professionals the world over know of Bank Street as a particular approach to the education of children - a way of learning that emphasizes child development and interaction. They know of Bank Street as a tutorial method of educating teachers. And they know of Bank Street as a philosophy that emphasizes humane and social values.

Bank Street, the street, gave its name to this influential strand of the progressive movement in 20th century educa­ tion. But the story of Bank Street, the institution, began fifteen years before its association with the street. '23riefJf/slory 23an.h cSireel College ofCJducalion

Coolidge, a musician and scholar who had recently inherited a considerable fortune. Elizabeth liked what she heard and (Pl the year 1916, conventional wisdom had it that chil­ asked for a detailed written plan for what was to become the J dren were to be seen and not heard. Typically, public Bureau of Educational Experiments. education consisted of a teacher, usually a woman, standing in front of her class and lecturing or conducting drills. W ith the help of her husband Wesley Clair Mitchell, a leading economist of the time, and her friend Harriet Yet there were in City at that time imaginative Johnson, Mrs. Mitchell drafted a proposal for the Bureau, women who asked whether it had to be that way. Harriet and it was accepted. Mrs. Coolidge promised to underwrite Johnson was one, Caroline Pratt another, Elizabeth Irwin yet the venture with $50,000 annually for ten years - with two another. And into their midst, on the eve of World War I, unusual provisions: that there be no reports on how the came a young woman with a rich academic background, a money was spent and that the entire sum be spent every year. receptive mind, and boundless energy and determination: Lucy Sprague Mitchell. Jhe 23ureau ofCJducalionaf 0xpenmenls

Mrs. Mitchell had been the first Dean of Women at the (7/n d so, in 1916, the Bureau of Educational of California at Berkeley. She knew John Dewey, .J1 Experiments was born and soon lodged in rented the revolutionary educator, and was influenced by his per­ quarters on in . Lucy sonality and writings and by the writing and thinking of Mitchell set out to conduct research on child development in other humanists of the day. In New York, she was caught up experimental and to that end she staffed the Bureau in the new milieu and was stirred by the activism of her new with a doctor, psychologists, a social worker, and teachers - friends. Like them, Lucy Mitchell looked upon the building all experienced with children, and all at work on a joint of a new kind of education as essential to the building of a study in as free an atmosphere as possible. better world, a more rational and humane society.

Mrs. Mitchell therefore decided to devote her life to improving schools for children. She and the colleagues she drew around her knew that reform meant not just a strengthening of the kinds of schools then in existence, but a fundamental change in schools - partly in structure, but most of all in the concept of how children learn. She deter­ mined to draw together a group of thinkers from different fields to study a variety of new experimental schools. Mrs. Mitchell discussed her ideas with her cousin, Elizabeth 23an£ 0/reel College ofCJducal.ion

By 1918, a nursery school was opened at the Bureau's this process was a bold new strategy for bringing about new quarters in a series of houses (including the Mitchells') change in the field of education: the development of a on West 12th and West 13th Streets. Harriet Johnson ! teacher education program that would result in a new kind directed the Nursery School, whose graduates were passed of teacher for a new kind of school. Research would contin­ along to Caroline Pratt's City and Country School. And all ue; the clinical approach in the real world of the classroom the while, Bureau staff continued to observe and collect data would continue; the work on children's literature would on the development of the children. continue. But the central strategy for effecting educational reform would be the development of a teacher education Mrs. Mitchell herself became a of children's program that would serve as a model to the education world. language, and she recorded children's remarks and the stories they told. She concluded that formal imposition of In 1930 came another historic moment in the Bureau's "meaning" hampered children's language as a medium of life: the acquisition of the old Fleischman's Yeast brewery creative expression. She found that the children's natural and storage building. Its address was to become synonymous expression reflected their keen awareness of the world. with the best in early childhood education: 69 Bank Street. It was fireproof, sturdy, and spacious, had room for the Nursery School to expand and, most important, had room An important fruit of her research was the Here and .5 Now Storybook, which was published in 1921 and became for the new Cooperative School for Teachers. an all-time bestseller among children's books. It was the first step in the Bureau's effort to improve the quality of This was a joint venture between the Bureau and eight children's literature, an effort that continues to this day. other experimental schools. Student teachers worked at their various schools Monday through Thursday and came to Children at the Nursery School and at City and Country Bank Street for classes, seminars, and conferences from were given opportunities to draw, paint, and model in clay - Thursday afternoon through Saturday noon. While it might unusual forms of expression in schools at that time. Indeed, have been simpler to have had all of them working at the their education was recognized as something other than a school on Bank Street, the staff welcomed the diversi­ prescribed curriculum. Children in the Harriet Johnson ty of experience that the different teachers brought Nursery School and at City and County, under the auspices together from their city, suburban, and rural schools. of the Bureau, had all of as their classroom: to ride a ferry boat, to visit a zoo, to look at a massive One of the important experiences for student bridge - to inquire, to understand, and to replicate them teachers was something called "the long trip" - a field and their purposes in clay, with blocks, and with paints. visit to s0me distant site: a coal mine, or a venture e:=!;~~==::11 with visiting nurses, some complete change of venue In 1926, the Working Council of the Bureau began a process of appraisal of the program of the past ten years and a rethinkine: of obiectives and stratee:ies. What emere:ed from ·23rief Jfislory 23an.h cS!reel Colleye ofcxlucalion

From these field trips and from other sources grew the In 1950, the Board of Regents of the State of New York advisement process. Unique to Bank Street, somewhat like granted the school - the name now changed, at the Regents' the system at an English university, the process features a request, to Bank Street College of Education - the right to senior member of the Bank Street faculty and several student confer the degree of Master of Science in Education. The teachers in an intense personal and professional examination core curriculum remained the training of college graduates in of what it takes to be a good teacher. Individual student the teaching of nursery and elementary school children. And teachers learn to build on their personal strengths and cor­ for the next two decades , both adults and children, rect their weaknesses to become the best teachers they can made their way to 69 Bank Street to learn and grow. be. Today, advisement remains at the core of all graduate study at the College. In the 1950s, Bank Street's Research Division conducted studies of teachers and the ways in which different kinds of After the move to Bank Street, the study of children con­ educational environments influenced children's develop­ tinued at the Bureau, and the results were published in ment. T he National Institute of Meneal Health awarded books, journals, and regular bulletins for dissemination to Bank Street a $1 million grant to develop a series of studies the educational community. New curricula were developed, focused on the school as a vehicle for promoting mental classroom material produced, and children's books written. health. 7 In 1937, a Division of Publications was established to do the work of writing for and about children. The Bank Street Writers Laboratory was founded, and it continues today to !73an.k 0/reel and/he 1960s give encouragement to writers to produce books for children that are consistent with the Bank Street understanding of ("ZJ y 1964, the federal government began to seek out the how children develop. Among the writers affiliated with the J.._, educational expertise of Bank Street with some fre­ Lab were such shining lights of children's literature as quency. With the Civil Rights Act in the offing, the U.S. Margaret W ise Brown ( Good Night Moon) and Maurice Commissioner of Education asked Bank Street's president, Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are). John H. Niemeyer, to consult with southern to create models fo r a desegregation program. That same year, In 1943, the New York City Board of Education asked Bank Street faculty were asked to help shape the national that workshops be given to some of its teachers on the Bank Head Start Program and to create guidelines fo r Title IV of Street methods, and Bank Street faculty began to work the Civil Rights Act of 1965. (Indeed, the first Head Start directly with public school teachers in their own classrooms. concept paper prepared by staff in the U.S. Office of T he innovative approaches that had long been the work of Economic Opportunity said, "The basic Head Start class­ Bank Street were no longer considered a threat to the estab­ room should work like a Bank Street College elementary lished order. In 1946, Bank Street began to offer night and classroom for nursery/kindergarten.") The College embarked weekend courses for nonmatriculated students. Soon some on program activities on behalf of Project Head Start in 'iOO neoole were attendin2: these courses. 1965 with a national workshop for administrators of the ':lJrie/Jf)slory 23an£ 0/reel Goffe!le ofGducah'on

program, combined with an out-placement service. It soon From 1968 to 1981 , Bank Street was one of the prime established one of the first national model Head Start pro­ sponsors of the federal Follow Through program, which grams, the Early Childhood Model Head Start provides educational support services for elementary school Training Center, which continued in operation well into the children and their families in economically disadvantaged 1970s. areas. Bank Street, which had participated in the design of Follow Through, was asked by school officials and parents Bank Street's Research Division became part of a nation­ in 14 communities across the country to run Follow al network of Early Childhood Research Centers devoted to Through programs in 43 schools. Several of these schools studies relevant to young children in Head Start and similar were designated as Demonstration Centers by the U.S. programs. Office of Education and the National Institute of Education to disseminate the Bank Street Follow Through method and In 1966, Bank Street opened its Early Childhood and materials to schools and educators around the world. Bank Family Resources Center in Manhattan, another major effort Street's involvement with Follow Through continued into in adapting the College's child development approach to the early 1990s. minority and poor children and their families. Research studies contributed to the training and development of 9 paraprofessionals in work with young children. 1970: !7Jan£ c5!reel Beaves !73anb c5!reel

Also in the 1960s, with the support of the Carnegie c]h e day had long since arrived when the Fleischman's Corporation, Bank Street's Educational Resources Center J Yeast building on Bank Street could no longer answer was started to help in the education of students handicapped the needs of an educational facility of national significance, by segregation and/or poverty. Over the years, in now in its second half-century of service. Reluctantly, in and later elsewhere, new methods were brought into play 1970, Bank Street left the street that had given the school its with 34,000 of these children. name and so much more. A new facility was built on West 112th Street, in the heart of Manhattan's ro;::-~ Another aspect of Bank Street's concern educational community. ~ ~ with the quality of education was the Bank Street .!J Readers. Published in 1965 by the Macmillan The address of the College had changed, but not its ,J-lt- 0, Company, they were the first m ultiradal, urban- drive toward innovation. oriented readers portraying contemporary culture, graphics, and language. The Bank Street Readers broke the In 1972, the New Perspectives program of weekend j "Dick and Jane" mold and set new standards for the publish- graduate courses was launched to attract new students, to / ing industry. During the 1960s and '70s, one out of four provide teaching opportunities for faculty and practitioners ::> children in city schools used the Bank Street Readers. from other parts of the country, and to experiment with new !73riefJfislory 23an£ 0/reel Gofleye ofCJducalion

courses. Since then, many thousands of students have come inclusion of these children in regular classrooms required a to Bank Street for one- and two-weekend courses in early reconceptualization of teacher education and practice, and childhood and elementary education, parenting and parent this became an important part of the work of Bank Street education, , supervision and administration, faculty. Faculty members are still working actively to foster and computers in education. inclusion in the public schools, and Bank Street now offers graduate degree programs in Special Education, Bilingual In 1976, a concept old to Bank Street had a new Special Education, and dual degree programs in social work beginning in 50,000 wooded acres of Harriman Park, part with both and . of the Palisades Interstate Park. Bank Street's Tiorati Workshop helps teachers learn how to integrate the natural In the 1970s, Bank Street staff also managed the Parent/ environment with work in the language, musical, and visual Child Development Center Project, a national program to arts and in the social, physical, and mathematical sciences. study and replicate exemplary centers for mothers and their This study of the environment is simply an extension of the young children, infants to age three. Staff worked closely concept of the community as classroom. Since its founding, with centers in New Orleans, LA, Houston, TX, and hundreds of teachers and thousands of school children have Birmingham, AL. participated in Tiorati's programs. Tiorati continues today, 11 with classes for children and teachers in Harriman Park, at Bank Street, and in public schools. :73an.i" 0/reel in I.he 19cJOs

Also in 1976, a program in Museum 7f1storically, Bank Street has responded to urgent and Education began to train a group of new professionals who JI emerging needs in education. In 1980, Bank Street were comfortable and qualified to work in both museums, saw powerful new information technologies on the horizon with their ever-expanding educational function, and in and was concerned about their effect on children's learning. classrooms. Later, Museum Leadership and Museum Special So the College founded the Center for Children and Education programs were added. Today, graduates of the Technology (CCT), the first of its kind devoted to research programs are on the staff of nearly every major museum in and development exclusively for children. Center researchers the country. Bank Street also started an Infant and Parent l examined the impact of new technologies and created such Development program to meet the need for broadly trained models of interactive software as Earth Lab and Project professionals to work with infants and toddlers and their l Inquire to foster children's thinking, problem-solving, parents. and literacy skills. The Center also found ways to use new technologies to improve the organization of learn­ The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of ing in the classroom and to provide new information 1975 mandated education "in the least restrictive environ­ to help with the restructuring of educational goals ment" for children with special educational needs. The and methods in the Information Age. ,23rie/ Jfislory 23anh c5lreel College of0ducahon

In 1981, Bank Street was awarded a $2.65 million call up, on screen, expert archaeologists to answer their grant from the U.S. Department of Education to create a questions about the ruins and about Mayan civilization. television series, computer software, and books that would enhance children's interest in and understanding of science, In 1982, the Bank Street Writer, the College's first ven­ mathematics, and technology. The resulting materials, ture into computer software, set new industry standards for known collectively as The Voyage ofthe Mimi, established ease of use. The Writer was for several years the most widely yet another Bank Street milestone in the history of American used word-processing software in schools across the country education. In 1984, the TV series - based on a humpback and was also a bestseller among adults for home use. It was whale research expedition - premiered on Public followed by other award-winning Bank Street software, Broadcasting System stations across the country. Related including the Bank Street Filer and Bank Street Wordbench. computer software and print materials were published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. In 1984, Bank Street formed the Media Group, which consolidated the longstanding Publications The Voyage ofthe Mimi received high praise, won awards Division with newer ventures in software develop­ for excellence in children's television and educational soft­ ment, television, video products, and records. The Bank ware, and - most important - is still bringing science alive Street setting provides unique opportunities to draw on 13 year after year in classrooms across the country. Bank Street's staff resources and to field-test products with children and Project in Science and Mathematics, which created the Mimi teachers in actual classrooms. materials, also got involved in helping schools use the new materials to their fullest potential through a spinoff project The 1980s also saw the College conducting a series of called MASTTE (Math, Science, and Technology Teacher major research studies, including The Prekindergarten Policy Education). The great success of the first Mimi voyage led to Study, an analysis and evaluation of Project Giant Step, New The Second Voyage ofthe Mimi, which was funded jointly by York City's prekindergarten program; The School-Based the U.S. D epartment of Education and the National Science Mental Health Study; the national Public School Early Foundation. On this voyage, released in 1988, the Mimi Childhood Study; "Women and Technology: A New Basis sailed to the Yucatan to explore Mayan ruins and solve an for Change"; "Home is Where the Heart Is," an examination ancient mystery. The Second Voyage is also widely used in of the plight of homeless preschoolers in New York City; and schools today. Mimi materials continue to be published by "Who is Teaching? Early Childhood Teachers in New York Sunburst Communications, a division of Houghton Mifflin. City's Publicly Funded Programs."

In another spinoff, this from The Second Voyage, CCT In 1989, Bank Street, as the lead organization in a staff created one of the earliest interactive videodiscs. consortium that included Harvard and Brown Universities, Palenque allowed students to "walk" through the Mayan won a five-year, $5 million award from the U.S. Department ruins at Palenque on the Yucatan peninsula, to take "photo­ of Education to serve as the national Center for Technology graphs" of the site and store them in an "album," and to in Education, its mission being to examine and evaluate the 771rief Jfislor_y 71an.h c'Slreel Goffeye of0cfucalion

uses of technology in the classroom and to explore education, and child care, and working with other innovative ways to improve education through the new organizations and agencies to develop innovative programs technologies. for children, youth, and families - especially those at high risk. These concerns are still central to our work in the 21st Although CCT left Bank Street after the grant was com­ century. pleted to become part of the Education Development Center (EDC), we still collaborate on a number of major projects, Our efforts to address the challenges of the 1990s were with funding from both government and private sources. In many and varied, not only in New York but in more than two of those projects, CCT has played an important role in twenty other cities. We recognized the great need for Bank Street's efforts to integrate technology across the well-prepared school leaders. Our Principals Institute, in teacher preparation curriculum. collaboration with the New York City Board of Education, produced nearly 400 school leaders in the 1990s, most of them women or members of minority groups. The Principals :J3an£ 0/reel in /he 1990s Institute is now entering its twelfth year of service to the City's schools. Our Leadership Center works with new prin­ e economic and educational gap between haves and c7h cipals and with established principals who wish to hone or 15 J have-nots widened in the decade of the '80s, and refresh their skills. continued to do so in the '90s, with American children comprising the largest subgroup in poverty. Poor children in We recognized the need to restructure schools to make general, and poor minority children in particular, experience them more responsive to the needs of students and teachers. a much higher level of developmental, educational, and The Center for School Restructuring continues its work of social risk. The high risks start even before birth and contin­ the 1990s today, restructuring middle schools in New York ue through adolescence. Poor children are less likely to City; its model was adapted by the City as the model for all achieve in school, more likely to drop out before completing middle schools restructuring. In the early and middle years high school, and more likely to enter a premature path to of the decade, we undertook a restructuring of elementary parenthood as teenagers. schools in Pittsburgh, PA through the Vision 21 project. And we started the New Beginnings project, a program for All of this has resulted in tremendous challenges for restructuring early childhood education in the Newark, NJ parents, families, employers, schools, and social service public schools. New Beginnings, funded by several founda­ agencies. Early in the 1990s, every division of Bank Street tions and the Newark Public Schools at about $1.5 million College began studying the changing needs of American per year, is presently at work in more than 100 kindergarten children and families - at school, at home, and in the through classrooms in Newark. workplace - and devising strategies to address those needs. Central to the work of Bank Street in the 1990s was We were, and are, concerned about the disproportion improving the quality of public education, early childhood between teachers of color in city schools and their students - 7 23riefJ£islory 23an.k 0/reel Coffe!le ofCcfucalion

the vast majority of the children are of color in America's offers an intensive weeklong program of professional devel­ great cities, but only a small number of teachers and opment for child care professionals, including directors of administrators are members of minorities. We coordinated programs. the preparation of minority teachers in ten cities in the Northeast and Midwest through the DeWitt Wallace­ The Liberty Partnerships Program (LPP), initiated by the Reader's Digest Pathways to Teaching Careers program, a State of New York, and partly funded by the State, has just national effort to prepare more minority teachers. We also completed its eleventh year at Bank Street. LPP is designed aggressively sought funding from the federal government to keep disadvantaged young people in school and to help and foundations to bring more minority students into Bank them go on to college or into meaningful employment. Street's programs. Currently, nearly 30% of our students are Students enter the program in sixth or seventh grade and people of color - one of the highest proportions among participate in a wide range of activities, including academic members of the Holmes Group, a national association of support, counseling, and enrichment experiences, through teacher preparation programs. their high school years. Over the life of the program, 90% of students have gone on to as varied as Bard, CUNY, To address directly some of the issues facing children Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, SUNY, and Cornell. and families, the Division of , Bank 17 Street's primary outreach arm, opened Head Start and In 1996, Bank Street's Graduate School, recognizing the childcare programs at Genesis/Robert F. Kennedy Center, a profound changes taking place in America's classrooms, housing complex for formerly homeless and low-income undertook the first major analysis and restructuring of its families. We also operate an Early Head Start program, entire range of programs since the 1930s. As a consequence working with young mothers and their infants and toddlers of that analysis and restructuring, which is ongoing, we have in their own homes. Another program prepares women, made major changes in the structure of our programs, witl1 including those who are moving from welfare to work, for two principal ends in view: to prepare teachers for the broad careers in childcare. The Institute for a Child Care range of student backgrounds and abilities in their class­ Continuum is presently working, in both California and rooms, and to prepare them to integrate technology across New York, with the largest - but hardest to reach - childcare the curriculum in their schools. Several grants have allowed community, those family, neighbors, and friends who care in us to provide our faculty with intensive preparation in inte­ their own homes for the young children of working parents. grating technology into the Graduate School's curriculum, And our annual Infancy Institute, in the Graduate School, continuing the Bank Street tradition of modeling for students what they are learning to teach.

Also in the 1990s, Bank Street launched several major research projects. The First Steps Study, a federally funded analysis of the First Steps literacy curriculum, was conducted r :13riefJ£islory :13an.k 0/reel Coffeye of0cfucalion

in public schools in Worcester, MA, and the findings of the sultants to The New York Times on its Learning Network, study have been widely reported in professional journals and which provides teachers with online guidance in using the at conferences. events of the day in their classrooms. Learning Network presently reaches 22,000 schools in 72 countries. A second major research project, the Small Schools Study, examined small schools in Chicago over a period of more than two years, gathering a wealth of data on the per­ 23anb c5!reel in /he 21sf Genlury formance of students, teachers, and administrators. The first large study of the efficacy of small schools, it was conducted (n new century and a new millennium find Bank Street by a team of educational researchers led by Bank Street and J1 drawing on the strengths of its past as it prepares itself by the Dean of the Graduate School, Patricia Wasley. The to meet the challenges of the future. Many of the challenges team included such noted educators as Michele Fine of the of the past two decades persist: the scarcity of well-prepared CUNY Graduate Center, Linda Powell ofTeachers College, teachers and school leaders; the frequently mediocre and and Sherri King of the Mamaroneck (NY) Public Schools. underfunded nature of programs of care and education for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers; the underperformance of In 1998, in response to New York State's mandating many children, particularly those in inner-city neighbor­ 19 prekindergarten classes for all children, Bank Street founded hoods; and the still-present gap between the haves and have­ the Center for Universal Prekindergarten. A resource not nots, especially, for Bank Street, as it applies to the resources only for New York but also for fledgling prekindergarten available to children in urban schools. programs across the nation, the Center provides professional development for early childhood teachers, addresses policy As a consequence of the persistence of these issues, many issues, and advocates for excellent programs for our youngest of our major programs from the 1990s and earlier continue: public school students. New Beginnings, the Principals Institute and the Leadership Center, Head Start and Early H ead Start, the Liberty Bank Street's Publications and Media Group developed Partnerships Program, the Tiorati Workshop, and the Center more than seventy titles in the Ready To Read series, pub­ for Universal Prekindergarten. We continue to work in all lished by Bantam; served as educational consultants to the areas of education and care that touch on the lives of chil­ Nickleodeon series, "Allegra's Window," since its dren, from birth through adolescence. Their teachers, their inception; developed a series of chapter books, West Side schools, their neighborhoods - all come within Bank Street's Kids, published by Hyperion; scripted a series of videos for purview, and all are the beneficiaries of programs developed children based on Bible stories; developed a series of books and implemented by the College. on controversial scientists, called Ideas on Trial; with McGraw-Hill, produced a Pre-K Math Curriculum Guide; The much-anticipated report on the Small Schools Study produced several Pre-K through 8th Grade Scholastic was released in June 2000, and already has been widely cited Curriculum Guides; and began serving as educational con- as a work that will allow genuine assessment of the impact of ------~--~------,.------

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small schools nationwide and will serve to guide both exist­ In 1916, the founders of Bank Street set out to study ing small schools and those that are being planned. children to find out what kind of environments - at home, at school, in the community - were best suited to foster and We expect to continue our work in improving the nurture their growth and development; to create those teacher preparation curriculum, in which we have taken a environments; and to teach adults to maintain them. Their leading national role. The National Commission on mission was to improve the education of children and their Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) has designated teachers by applying to the educational process all available Bank Street as one of only three superb graduate schools of knowledge about learning and growth, and by connecting education in the country. The National Board on teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world. Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) has designated In so doing, they sought to strengthen not only individuals Bank Street as one of only five resource centers in America. but the community as well, including family, school, and We are honored by such recognition but have no intention the larger society in which adults and children, in all their of resting on our laurels. T here is still much work to be done diversity, interact and learn. They saw in education the to prepare teachers well for today's classrooms, and we opportunity to build a better society. enthusiastically accept our role in that work. T hat was our mission in 1916. It is our mission today. 21 And, of course, with all our programs of research and outreach, at Bank Street's core is the provision of the best education possible for more than 900 graduate students and fo r 430 children in the School fo r Children, and 60 infants and toddlers in the Family Center. The Bank Street Family Center is a model childcare center, in which one-fourth of the children have special needs and are fully integrated into the day-to-day activities of the classroom. These components of the College are the heart of our work, the place where teaching and learning are central to the everyday fabric of Bank Street's life.

The world today is vastly changed from the world of 1916. And Bank Street is not what it was in the early days of the Bureau of Educational Experiments. There have been great changes in the institution. Yet, in one remarkable way it has stayed the same: the focus remains on children - their needs and how to meet them. 3oard of Trustees Life Trustees Elizabeth S. Pforzheimer, Chair Frederica P. Barbour William F. Blitzer, Vice Chair Sarah M. Kerlin Lynn Straus, Vice Chair Millicent C. McIntosh Jeffrey Sussman, Vice Chair John H . N iemeyer, President Emeritus Sue Kaplan, Treasurer Philip A. Straus Kate R. Whitney, Secretary Gail Koff, General Counsel Associate Trustees Gina Leonetti Boonshofc, Parent ,tatutory Trustees Luisa Costa Garro, Staff Anthony Asnes Carol Phechean, Parent Daniel L. Black Toni Porter, Staff William C. Crowley Yolanda C. Ferrell-Brown Distinguished Faculty Peter Duchin Claudia Lewis, Jill W. Iscol Distinguished Specialist in Augusta Souza Kappner Children's Literature Emerita Kit Laybourne Edna K. Shapiro, Distinguished Specialist Kenneth B. Lerer in Psychology and Development Bech J. Lief Emerita Christopher Mayer Mary Patterson McPherson College Administration Laura Parsons Augusta Souza Kappner, President Clementine Pugh Barbara Coleman, Interim Dean for George P. Scurria, Jr. Administration and Program Westina Matthews Shatteen Services, Graduate School of John A. Shutkin Education Robert M. Steinberg Reuel Jordan, Dean, Children's Programs Margaret L. Stevens Teresa S. Karamanos, Dean, Valerie Suslak External Affairs Evelyn Rome Tabas Fern Khan, Dean, Continuing Education Jean Vitalis Linda Levine, Interim Dean for Academic Affairs and Special Projects, Graduate School of Education Frank Nuara, Acting Vice President, Finance and Administration

Cover Photograph by Bruce Levin Photograph on Page 1 from Bank Street Photography Archives Written by Anne Perryman and Patricia Fisher Artwork and Design by Abigail Reponen Managing Editor: Glenn M. Edwards Associate Editor: Ruth M. Kolbe Copyright © 2000 Bank Street College of Education